The Hannover Adventure Zoo – As Experienced by A German-American Couple in Germany

“Can you feel the love tonight?”

The Wife and I finally made it to the Hannover Zoo. I was so impressed it blew my tiny expat brain straight out my ears. The Zoo is huge, with tons of animals to see and fun activities for everyone to enjoy — even for screaming kids, patient adults, and wildly immature Americans like myself. They even have a boat tour, which takes you past several of the exhibits as if you’re on safari. The Yukon exhibit is incredible all by itself, complete with a rustic fishing town and a huge crane jutting out over the polar bear exhibit.

The weather that day was perfect, and we arrived just before feeding time. We got to see hippos, polar bears, rhinos and timber wolves being fed. It was glorious.

One thing to note: The Hannover Zoo entrance fee is expensive. Like €27 euros per person expensive. You can buy 7 half-liters of beer for that! But once inside, you’ll see why it’s so expensive, and you’ll see right where all that money goes; the place is spotless. It’s clean and well-organized. It’s also decked out with so many little details and things to see, you’ll feel like you’re inside Jurassic Park (minus the horror and bloodshed).

Oh, and because this is Germany — yeah — you can drink inside the Zoo. Alcohol is totally allowed, so bring a huge bottle of hooch, a case of beer for backup and then go point at the monkeys and laugh. We even saw a bachelorette party toting a suitcase full of brew doggies, and they brought it with them on the boat tour! God damn I love this country.

Anyway, we hope you enjoy this video, but even more importantly, we hope you can visit the Hannover Zoo in person! You’ll love it!

NOTE: Video contains mild swearing, so be sure and turn your volume up real loud if you’re at work. :)

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39 thoughts

Looks like a great place to take the family – or just a stubborn old man like mine who is hard-pressed to leave his easy chair on weekends, but he so loves ANIMALs and such I might just be able to drag him to the Hannover Zoo should we ever make it to Europe, which we both actually want to do at some point! Thanks for sharing…

Been there, done that – and I’m glad you two loved it, too.
If you like those kind of zoos – you will love Hamburg’s Hagenbeck’s too! Though I prefer our precious – no – rather expensive gem, here. Been there in July, with my sis – and before with my nieces and with my younger niece alone and with friends and with my cousin – in fact I use any visitor as excuse to go there and spoil myself rotten. Yes it is expensive, yes, you can easily leave about 100 Euro there for two persons.

Trust an american man though that the most remarkable thing he loved was that you were allowed to buy beer there – and could take your own with you, if you wanted to.

Did you go to one of those shows in the “show arena”? Where they show snakes, let parrots fly freely and show that coatis would make good drug detection animals, too?

Amazing zoo..very un-zoo-like. Not depressing. Love the elephant space and all the attention to detail. That street scene looks a lot like downtown St. Paul, MN…hahahaha One of your best videos yet. Glad you two had a great time- and shared it with us!

Leipzig Zoo is nice, too — it was the home of the late Heidi, the cross-eyed opossum. One of the funniest signs I saw was at the place where they had the bonobo chimps. There was a new baby (as opposed, of course, to an old baby) and the sign named the mother but noted that the father was unknown. Well, DUH! Bonobos are the most promiscuous animal on the planet, so I’m pretty sure that Mom was ‘friendly’ with everyone else – male and female – in the troop!

Looks fab – I was really impressed with Munich zoo as well, but the polar bears have more room in Hanover it looks like. Hopefully all German zoos are this good – think I’ve only heard a couple of negatives about Berlin zoo, so it might be the exception.

Enjoyed your commentary – and giggled that you were frightened of the pelican ;)

Were the goats as cocky in Hanover as they were in Munich? They had learnt how to cut out the middle man at the feeding stations and everything!

The first time I went to visit my sister in H she took me to the zoo. I agree, it is a magical world from the boat safari to the sinking ship to the squirting-water playground. Now, with our little creatures (and no, I am not speaking of the zoo animals) around we go on a regular basis. It is so much cheaper when you buy the annual ticket, my mathematically wired brain keeps delighting me with how cheap a visit is on average every time we go ;)

There’s a very large monkey house at Munich Zoo. The last time I went, it was feeding time—they were basically being fed kitchen scraps—and the monkeys frantically ran to the food hatch, then ran back to find a space to eat.
So when I approached the enclosure, there was a large monkey tucking into a giant Breze/pretzel. Only in Bavaria …

I love this zoo too! You have to get a year pass though to save money. Or a family pass. Then you can literally go for free everyday. Also you cannot miss the Winter Zoo. Part of it becomes a winter wonderland with a giant ice rink, skate rentals, food huts and yes, lots of alcohol including hot mulled wine. It’s packed and the vibe is great.

Thank you soooooo much for sharing these videos … I’m from Hannover but at the moment I’m living in southern México – so it’s awsome to see a bit of my “old” hometown (by the way, Hannover is NOT boring – just go to Linden, the best place to live/stay in Hannover ;-) )